Carbon Copied
by one-hep-cat
Summary: Revised 2-2-09. One shot. As Trowa rides his bike through the neighborhood, he starts wondering if what he fought the war for was worth the end results. Mild shounen-ai.


**Carbon Copied**

_AN: Influenced by the song "Little Pink Houses" by John Cougar Mellancamp._

_Disclaimers: There is no ownage of Gundam Wing or "Little Pink Houses"._

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I've always hated sameness. Like the cookie cutter houses that make up suburbia. It screams a lack of originality, both in the creator and the occupant. Each morning, the man of every household leaves at 7:05 a.m. sharp to go to work in a pressed suit with a black or brown briefcase in hand, while the woman prepares three children of equidistant ages like five, seven, and nine, or two, five, and eight, for school before heading to her own job at precisely 8:15—unless she is the suburban soccer mom/housewife. Both husband and wife eat their lunch with coworkers, so-called friends, or alone at the same location every day, ordering the same entrée every day except Friday, when it's time to spice things up and order a different vegetable than normal. At 3:45, the woman returns home to either start dinner or instructs a maid to do so. At 3:50, the husband will call and say he'll be late because a meeting will run long, but he's really seeing the sexy new secretary that has yet to become boring within the realm of suburbia. Well-behaved kids will do their homework and play nice with the neighbors for an hour or two until the streetlights come on. At 9:45, the children are in bed fast asleep (they have been for at least an hour) and the husband strolls in ten minutes later. The wife smells cheap perfume, gets fed up, pulls out a shotgun, and shoots the cheating sonofabitch between the eyes at exactly 10:00.

Ah… got a little carried away there. I tend to ramble when my mind lets me. So, no shooting. Not here, anyway. Instead, they go to bed and the same routine happens the next day and the day after that for the rest of their dull, cookie cutter lives.

I stop my bike and stretch my arms over my head, staring at each house lining the street I currently travel. Every last one of them looks identical. It's a wonder anyone knows which house is his. Every lawn is trimmed neatly, hedges are kept in line, and certainly children don't leave bikes in the lawn or toys on the front porch.

Absently, I finger the loops in my ear. I don't fit in this silly world of sameness with my piercings, profession, and generally alternate lifestyle.

With a sigh, I settle again on my abused but faithful bike and pedal on. Can't have a vagrant ex-Gundam pilot in the neighborhood, now can we? Think of what the neighbors would say. He doesn't even wear a helmet.

What can I say? I live on the edge.

I push my sheaf of long brown bangs out of my eyes, check the street both ways (okay… not so far on the edge), and pedal across.

Is this what we saved Earth for? This monotonous little hole in life where people have much and appreciate little of it? Where lives are so routine that spontaneity is a foreign and frightening concept in their comfortable little suburbia?

I don't know about the other pilots, but that's not what _I_ fought for. I fought for the beauty and lust of living. I fought for imagination and the uncertainty of the future and the silly jobs like a circus performer, flipping around in a crazy tent because it is just… _fun_. I fought for art and for love and nature and life. It sounds so 'la vie boheme', doesn't it? But it's true.

None of my friends would believe me if I told them this. Back during the war, I was the creepily quiet, yet oddly insightful 'one-eyed' Gundam pilot. Not my own words.

Okay… not quite right. _One_ would believe me. But he's… well… oddly insightful too. With a faint smile that is slowly becoming easier to manage, I glance down at my left hand where a band of silver glitters up at me.

I push through suburbia, my head in the clouds even as I watch the mostly empty sidewalks before me.

No, I _didn't_ fight a war for this bland existence that surrounds me. And I have a feeling that my friends, even the stoic Heero or the severely uptight Wufei, didn't fight for this either.

With a pathetically melancholy sigh, I pedal on, off the sidewalk now and onto a beaten bike path through a field. A quick glance at my watch tells me I'm making good time. Maybe it's curious why I'm biking when I could drive and get where I am going faster. Well, after all I said, it shouldn't be a surprise. Why rush through life? If I survived a war, I could survive a bike ride. Besides… it's a beautifully mild day and I love this old bike. So on I pedal.

The bike path drags on for a while and the houses of suburbia get older and older. Eventually they start to change. They start to take on the life and personality of their owners and I smile. Some chubby and squat, some tiny yet long, others with vibrant overgrown gardens, and others still overrun with weeds. The one down at the end of the bike path, where the street dead-ends makes me smile even more. Splashed with randomly colored shutters, and an even wilder front door, it screams 'this is home'. I notice that one shutter blew clean off in last week's storm. An old car is parked in the cracked driveway and a bike is thrown haphazardly on the lawn, like it should be.

I toss my old bike next to the one on the lawn and make my way up the front porch, kicking my shoes off in a pile of others before I step through the open door. A familiar backside with a long braid is walking away with an armload of God knows what. But he stops and glances over his shoulder, flashing me a sunny smile when his gaze lands on me. "It's about time, Tro. Your hubbie's already here, working his little heart out."

"What are you having him do, Duo?"

"Oh you know. Only the best in hard labor for him." And he winks.

I smirk. "What can I do to help?"

He shrugs. "Anything. No wait. Here. Decorate. You know my thing with heights and ladders. And it will keep you off Quat at least until the festivities start."

"I'm not so sure. I'm quite talented at multitasking," I deadpan.

Duo nearly asphyxiates with laughter. "Well, get to decorating," he instructs, wiping a tear from his eye. "Wufei should be here any minute. It's a good thing Heero doesn't walk around armed anymore, 'cause this party is going to startle the piss right out of him."

"And he doesn't suspect a thing?" Quatre asks, coming around the corner. Somehow, he manages to loop his arms around me and my bundle of party décor. I break my conversation with Duo briefly to give him a kiss.

"Probably. He's Heero." Duo shrugs. "He suspects everything. So get your hands off each other and get cracking! There will be plenty of touchy feely time when we've had a few drinks in our system."

"Leave me out of that, Maxwell," Wufei says, coming in behind me.

"'Fei!" Duo pounces upon his person, despite Wufei's blatant dislike of any of his 'touchy feely' behavior.

"Get off. Just show me what to do."

"Well you do this," he snuggles close, "and then if you're really turned on you lick this spot right behind the ear-"

"I meant for the party, Maxwell!" Quatre and I grin at one another at Wufei's expense. He fends Duo off further. "Now get off. I'd rather your fiancé not kill me just because you can't keep your hands to yourself."

"You're no fun."

"The party? Please?"

"All right. 'Fei, follow me."

I lean down to kiss Quatre once more before we part to help Duo set up. You know… in this oddly colored house at the dead-end of a not-so-suburban street, where the doors are left open throughout the day so any random stranger could walk right in, where we're setting up a party for a good friend for no reason at all except that his fiancé had a fanciful idea, maybe I was wrong. The entire world hasn't gone to waste in the semblance cookie cutter existence. The people I work with, the people I love, we're not carbon copies of the model man. I know I could never insult them in that way. And if _we_ aren't, I'm sure there are others who put vibrancy in their lives every day as well. And for that slice of hope, that silly little difference among us all, maybe this planet _was_- and is still- worth saving after all.

I guess I'll have to wait to find out.

Fin.


End file.
